Migration: What next for the EU's asylum reform plans?

In April, the European Parliament voted to approve a landmark package of migration and asylum reforms, set in motion by the implosion of the EU asylum system in 2015.

It was the last major hurdle in almost a decade of political wrangling. A majority of lawmakers waved through each of the 10 legislative texts, though the deal was slammed by many parliamentarians on both the left and right.

Nongovernmental organizations and left-leaning lawmakers said it undermined the right to claim asylum and that nothing in the deal would prevent people from making the dangerous boat crossings across the Mediterranean to reach the EU. The far right charged it did not go far enough to reduce irregular immigration into the bloc, the underlying aim of the overall package.

Just as those involved in getting the deal over the line were breathing a sigh of relief, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk immediately said he would not implement part of the deal that requires member states to relocate refugees from elsewhere in the EU for a more equitable distribution. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban also slammed it on X, formerly Twitter.

EU reforms only the 'starting point'

As Nicole de Moor, Belgium's secretary of state for migration, acknowledged this week, there is still a long way to go. "Getting the deal done was not the end of our work," de Moor, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, told reporters in the Belgian city of Ghent on Tuesday. "It was a starting point."

The new rules, first proposed by the European Commission in September 2020 after a previous failed attempt, are expected to come into force in 2026. They still need a final blessing from the member states, though this is strictly a formality since they already gave the green light. In the next two years, member states will need to write the changes into national law.

But the devil is in the details, or perhaps in this case, the implementation. As Camille Le Coz of the Migration Policy Institute Europe told DW in April, many things remain to be seen. "The deal as it stands is an agreement that's going to be much tougher on asylum-seekers, that's also failing to answer many of the issues that Europe is facing at the moment," she said.

"The key question is can we get […] this complex system that's supposed to be implemented in the next two years to actually lead to change in the way migration flows are currently managed?"

Sweeping reforms to implement

Even for a willing member state, there's much to implement. Under the new rules, asylum-seekers and refugees are to be more thoroughly screened within seven days of arrival in the EU by land, sea or air.

Their details will be stored in the European asylum fingerprint database Eurodac, which will be expanded with further biometrics data. Within the same week, they will be directed to one of two asylum processing tracks.

Under a new fast track, migrants from countries with asylum claim recognition rates below 20%, such as India, Pakistan or Morocco, could be held at the border for up to 12 weeks. Detention centers are to be set up in Greece, Italy, Malta, Spain, Croatia and Cyprus.

Those rejected will be deported directly from the EU's external borders, either to their country of origin or potentially back to a third country, if it is designated safe by the EU.

Other asylum claimants, likely the overwhelming majority, will be processed under the regular track, which is due to be shortened. At present, asylum decisions often take years.

Children are to receive special treatment, with countries obliged to install independent monitoring mechanisms to ensure rights are upheld. In addition, conditions offered to asylum-seekers across the bloc are supposed to be standardized.

Relocation reality check

The most contentious part of the deal, at least from the point of view of Warsaw or Budapest, is a mechanism that obliges EU states to take in approved refugees from other member states to spread new arrivals more evenly.

Under EU rules, asylum applications are generally supposed to be made in the country of arrival, a system few would assert is fair to southern border states like Italy and Greece.

If other member states refuse relocations, with thousands set to take place each year, they must pay a financial contribution of €600 million ($646 million) a year or offer logistical support instead. The question is whether Budapest and Warsaw would fork out or offer any meaningful assistance, given their long-standing opposition to immigration.

Davide Colombi of the Center for European Policy Studies told DW that while no one would expect Hungary to take in relocated refugees, Tusk's comments were more ambiguous.

"He said that Poland will not take any illegal migrants. Asylum-seekers and refugees are not 'irregular' migrants by virtue of their application for asylum," Colombi said. Either Tusk was being vague on purpose or deliberately conflating recognized refugees and migrants, he added.

EU's migration bickering here to stay

According to Colombi, the mechanism also provides member states with "ways to escape their responsibilities — for example, through return sponsorships and financial contributions." 

It will be up to the European Commission, as well as EU rights agencies, to ensure the deal is implemented as intended, he stressed, though the EU executive branch had been reluctant to push EU capitals in the past.

The new pact may have put to bed years of fraught and grueling negotiations, but with a swing to the right expected in the coming European Parliament elections in early June, few observers in Brussels see migration slipping down the agenda any time soon. Last year, EU asylum applications reached a seven-year high at 1.1 million.

On Tuesday, at the same Ghent press conference as Nicole de Moor, Johansson said the European Commission would present its own implementation plan well ahead of schedule. She would also push member states to submit their national plans by November, she said, well before the January deadline. "Twenty-four months could go very quickly," she warned.

Edited by: Lucy James